From the trenches, from the rooftops, from the Heart

Greetings from life and Lent in south Louisiana

I want to welcome all of the new subscribers from the Fullness of Truth conference! It was a true joy to speak to all of you that weekend, and getting to meet so many of you after the talk and hearing some of your stories was a beautiful experience. God is so good. If you’re new to my writing, you can check out my blog archives on my main website from before I moved my writing over to Substack in 2023 (and check out upcoming speaking events for 2024).

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From the trenches or from the rooftops?

I am trying to decide where I’m coming from this week. Am I writing a letter from the trenches…or shouting with joy from the rooftops?

Being oh-so-human (and oh-so-melancholic), I think my tendency is to sit a minute in the trenches.

My hands are full, and my AnyList app to-do list is full-er. Michael and I discerned back in December to slow down this spring - and we truly have slowed down a bit - but for my particular family, everyday life with our six children ages 14 to 1 is intense, whether or not we have one thing a week or five things scheduled outside of the home.

My mom and my aunt both come over fairly regularly just to help out (blessing upon blessing, I know!), and I always have to eat a little piece of humble pie when they arrive. Lots of dishes, laundry, dirty floors (always, all three), eight people worth of odds and ends left around the house. Little boys ride light-up scooters and roller blades through the kitchen while I’m cooking dinner (when has that EVER been okay, boys?!), 82 1/2 discipline moments, tears over the last of the pretzels being eaten by somebody else, a project that is due tomorrow that requires a trip to Walmart sometime before I can sign off for the day.

Nerf bullets fly into the macaroni and cheese on the stove. I reach to get the Nerf bullet out and accidentally knock over the baby clinging to my legs, who sits down hard and starts to wail. As I rush to the sink to wash raw chicken off my hands so I can pick up the baby, out of the corner of my eye I see two things: (a) all the plastic bowls have been expelled from the kid drawer onto the kitchen floor and (b) our big dog sniffing around the chicken I’m trimming hurriedly for dinner. I let out a warning growl (sort of to every living thing around me).

I am so tired, mentally and physically, every single night.

Aaaaaand I know I’m really selling family life here, aren’t I? :)

People always ask me, “How do you do it [have six kids]?” And I often say, “Well, sometimes it’s just as chaotic and difficult as everyone is so scared it would be…but it’s also pretty wonderful.”

Because ya’ll - I’ve also got all these moments too where I want to proclaim the goodness of God from the rooftops.

Yes, I’ve trusted Him in big ways for many years, and I’ve had a lot to handle, but knowing He’s with me, that I haven’t shut Him out of any one part of my life or any major decisions…there’s real peace in that.

He just provides…in big and small ways. He is always smoothing out this crisis or that one, dissolving one mountain or sending me extra new resources to climb another one, calming me down (always), sending a hundred little consolations and pleasures and perfect timings.

And day-to-day, He sprinkles so many little blessings on me, on all of us, and just hopes we’ll notice.

An anonymous note scribbled on the chalkboard in our hallway, “I love my family and I thank God for my life.” Michael calling everybody outside to see an extraordinary sunset or a beautiful moon. Teaching my fourteen year old to make my family-famous chocolate chip cookies. The baby getting brought into the living room after his bath, wrapped in a towel and hoisted up for viewing like a little prince, and everybody fawning over him and arguing over who gets to get him ready for bed. Family prayer, when one of the kids who usually cuts up suddenly has a really deep, beautiful prayer intention that makes Mike and me look up at one another, teary-eyed. Elaborate dressup costumes contests and impromptu a capella performances. The whole family outside cheering on a newbie how to ride a bike. Playing old videogames and everyone getting beat by the freakishly smart seven-year-old.

And all the inside jokes, my goodness.

I was in tears earlier this week though after a long, impossible, THIS-ISN’T-WORKING day.

There are plenty of days that feel like a slog, that tempt me to worry I’m not enough for all this, for all these people.

And then yesterday…somehow we had this really glorious afternoon. The Lord made a hundred things align just right so that we had a Breather (on a school night, no less!).

We actually had time to waste as a family outside enjoying the beautiful spring evening, and the kids played silly games and climbed our blossoming pear trees and entertained the baby and didn’t fight as constantly. I had some quiet minutes to read a few books to my Kindergartener. I played soccer with my 12 year old to help her prep for soccer tryouts on Saturday. I helped my 8th grader make THE coolest Ironman arc reactor out of Mardi Gras light-up throws for an event as school today.

There was more. An easy dinner only one person complained about. A softening of hearts in certain tense relationships in the house. And somehow there weren’t 8 loads of laundry to fold (the true miracle of the day).

Suffice to say, my little cup was filled and my heart calmed.

What’s in front of me is my cup, and it is both trenches and rooftops, hard and beautiful.

I take this cup, Lord.

“I will lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord” (Psalm 116:13).

From the Heart

A few weeks ago, I experienced the miscarriage of another precious little one. Miscarriage is a special suffering in the trenches of motherhood. From morning sickness for weeks, to the D&C I had to have, to post-miscarriage fluctuating hormones, I haven’t started off this year feeling my best physically. It’s been hard, on top of the intensity of family life.

But the cup is always both.

We had a beautiful memorial Mass and burial for our baby - the first time we’ve done that. There were beautiful moments of conversation with my children about Heaven, about their siblings there, and the born-into-Heaven babies of friends and family. And Michael was indescribably good to me for weeks through it all.

It comes to me that my prayers from both the trenches and the rooftops are the same in this season of my life. I continue to go back, no matter what kind of day I’m having, no matter the trial, to fleeing, resting, rejoicing, hiding, and hoping in the Heart of God.

It feels too simple, sometimes. There’s nothing fancy here.

I am just calming down and looking up, reminding myself (really, letting Him do that) of who I am in Him, over and over.

But, He reminds me now, who am I to judge where I am in my own spiritual life, or the value of persevering in returning again and again to the Lord, with all my particular Yesses and circumstances?

I think Our Lady reminds us that some of the fanciest spiritual work of all is this: to work at and trust God with all your heart with what you believe the Lord has put in front of you.

“Work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance” (Colossians 3:23).

“Blessed is she who believed that what was spoken to her from the Lord would be fulfilled.” (Luke 1:45)

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